Pages

Category: conference

I heard so many inter­est­ing talks, met so many provoca­tive peo­ple, and thought so hard about com­pu­ta­tion that I’ll never hear the words “this is a test” the same way again.

One high­light for me was talk­ing with Mark Guz­dial about pic­tures and sounds as trans­for­ma­tions of binary infor­ma­tion. As I con­tinue to think about inter­sect­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for our brand of sci­en­tific inquiry and what promise it might hold in CS, I’m def­i­nitely going to turn my atten­tion toward core con­cepts in how we rep­re­sent infor­ma­tion. More impor­tantly, per­haps, are issues of how we gen­er­ate, mod­ify, and under­stand information.

Another was rais­ing issues of what counts as evi­dence, and how we define learn­ing. I really look for­ward to hav­ing more inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions about what we think we’re study­ing when we try to study stu­dent learning.

A third was get­ting to con­tinue ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions about edu­ca­tion with friends, both old and new. To me, the heart of a good con­fer­ence is the way our inter­ests and ideas about cen­tral prob­lems in the field spill out­side the bounds of ses­sions and talks. These con­ver­sa­tions are what excite and ener­gize me.

Finally, I had an amaz­ing time at the pre-conference Doc­toral Con­sor­tium (DC). I was able to meet col­leaguesfromacrosstheworld who are start­ing (or, in some cases wrap­ping up) their dis­ser­ta­tions. It was a thrill to see the vari­ety of prob­lems peo­ple are tak­ing on and an amaz­ing oppor­tu­nity to both get and give detailed feed­back on our work.